Enhanced oil recovery methods are utilized to increase the amount of crude oil that can be extracted from an oil field. At small scales (channel sizes on the order or nanometers or micrometers), fluids can behave differently in that factors such as surface tension begin to dominate the system. With better understanding of fluid behavior at small scales, enhanced oil recovery methods can be improved to extract even more oil from a source rock or reservoir. Microfluidic models which can replicate conditions found in underground reservoirs have been developed to observe, evaluate, and understand physical and chemical phenomena in oil extraction and recovery.